U.S. officials are reportedly planning on investigating the economic effects of dropping all tariffs and quotas for the world’s least developed countries.

According to a report by Reuters, the U.S. International Trade Commission is set to do the research and present a report to the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office early next year.

The study would focus on the effects such a move would have on “U.S. industries, consumers and free trade partners as well as poor countries that already have preferential access to the United States.”

The report will be presented to the USTR’s office in February, two months after what is being described as a key World Trade Organization meeting will take place.

Trade proponents are hoping that the 153 members of the WTO can agree on the long-stalled Doha round of global trade talks at the important meeting. The fact that the USITC is not presenting the report until two months later, however, does not bode well for the agreement.

The American public will probably never see what’s in the report, though. According to Reuters, a similar study was conducted in 2007, but never made public.

The likely results would be increased outsourcing to low-wage nations. American multinational corporations would take advantage of the cheap labor provided by the world’s least developed countries. At the same time, they would be able to ship their goods back to the U.S. duty free and increase their profit margin greatly.

The only positive aspect of the study is the fact that it could spell doom for the Doha round and for the WTO. For the past 10 years, the 153 member nations have been debating the deal that would further open markets around the world.

Poor nations want prosperous states, such as the U.S., to open their markets to agricultural imports.

Specifically, India and Brazil have lambasted the U.S. for its failure to negotiate on the removal of agricultural tariffs, which they say distort trade and hurt poor farmers worldwide.

Conversely, large economies have pushed for poorer economies to open their markets to manufactured goods and services. That has largely been resisted by the smaller economies involved in the negotiations.

To avoid the impasse, WTO officials had hoped to reach a paired down deal that would provide some of the poorest nations in the world with duty-free access to industrialized nations. Officials had also hoped to get developed nations to slash agricultural subsidies. The former is largely targeted at the U.S. and the European Union.

U.S. officials, however, are not willing to drop agricultural subsidies and allow emerging markets such as China, India and Brazil to continue to subsidize their nation’s farmers.

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